Read Ebook: Famous Fighters of the Fleet Glimpses through the Cannon Smoke in the Days of the Old Navy by Fraser Edward

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Close to her mighty foe she came, Resolv'd to sink or gain a name Which Envy might admire; Devouring guns tumultous sound, Destructive slaughter flam'd around, And seas appear'd on fire.

When lo! th' heroic Gardiner fell, Whose worth the Muse attempts to tell, But finds her efforts vain; Some other bard must sing his praise, And bold as fancy's thoughts must raise The sadly mournful strain.

Carkett, who well his place supply'd, The mangling bolts of death defy'd, Which furious round him rag'd; While Hammick points his guns with care, Nor sends one faithless shot in air, But skilfully engag'd.

Baron and Winzar's conduct show'd Their hearts with untam'd courage glow'd, And manly rage display'd; Whilst every seaman firmly stood, 'Midst heaps of limbs and streams of blood Undaunted, undismay'd.

Austin and Campbell next the Muse Thro' fiery deluges pursues, Serenely calm and great; With their's the youthful Preston's name Must shine, enrolled in list of fame, Above the reach of fate.

If e'er again his voice be heard, With British thunder-bolts prepar'd, And on thy coast appears; His dreadful tongue such sounds will send, As all the neighb'ring rocks shall rend, And shake all France with fears.

P. Cochet.

?L?GIE SUR LA MORT DU CAPT. GARDINER

Aux combats il ?toit un terrible ennemi, Son exemple animoit le coeur le plus timide, Au milieu des hazards le foible est affermi, Ayant un tel chef pour son guide.

Conduit par ce h?ros, vos canons vomissoient La foudre ? gros bouillons, et la mort tout ensemble, Il inspiroit sa force ? ceux qui combattoient, Ha! l'ennemi le sent et tremble.

O! quel funeste coup, ce h?ros n'est donc plus? Le brave Gardiner tombe et finit sa vie, Mais il vit dans nos coeurs, il vit par ses vertus, Est-ce le ciel qui nous l'envie?

Quelle aimable douceur envers ses prisonniers, Sa tendresse pour eux ?galoit son courage, Il ne ressembloit point aux inhumains guerriers, Qui ne respirent que carnage.

Whatever may be the quality or literary merit of these verses, there could, surely, be no higher tribute to the memory of a British officer, the tribute of an enemy in the bitter hour of defeat; and the incident in all its circumstances is unique. With it we may close the story.

FOOTNOTES:

Wednesday 12. Captain Gardiner was again examined and made it appear that the Admiral took the whole Command of the Ship from him, and no thing done that day but what he ordered.

RODNEY'S SHIP ON RODNEY'S DAY

Brave Rodney made the French to rue The Twelfth of April 'Eighty two.

The West Indies is the Station for honour.

Nelson.

A finger's pressure, nothing more, The ponderous cannon's thund'ring roar, A passing cloud of smoke, and lo! The waves engulf the haughty foe!

... in the battle's dance of death, She'll dance the strongest down.

'Twas long past noon of a wild November day When Hawke came swooping from the west; He heard the breakers thundering in Quiberon Bay, But he flew the flag for battle, line abreast. Down upon the quicksands roaring out of sight Fiercely beat the storm-wind, darkly fell the night, But they took the foe for pilot and the cannon's glare for light When Hawke came swooping from the west.

One result of Hawke's swoop was, of course, the stopping of all French invasion schemes for the rest of the Seven Years' War. Henceforward there was no need to watch the southward beacons night after night; no need of more shore batteries at Brighton and elsewhere along the Sussex coast; no further need to cover the South of England with standing camps for Pitt's new militiamen to learn their drill in; no more need to shock the good ladies of Hampshire with the sight of bare-legged Highlanders marching to and fro.

The guns that should have conquered us, they rusted on the shore, The men that would have mastered us, they drummed and marched no more; For England was England, and a mighty brood she bore When Hawke came swooping from the west.

The proud Armado of King Edward's ships,

in the words of poor Kit Marlowe's 'mighty'--and prophetic--line.

We now come directly to the place, time, and circumstances of the event, taking up the tale a little before the fighting actually opens.

Both fleets during March and the first week of April were hard at work refitting. Twelve of Rodney's ships had come out from England with him and wanted little; the others of the thirty-six, however, belonged to the fleet originally on the station, and after the trying time of it they had had during the past six months, including two sharp fights with the French, were badly in need of a refit. De Grasse's fleet was in like case. The arrival of convoys from home, however, with war stores and supplies of all kinds for both fleets, towards the end of March, made it all but certain that the month of April would not go by without a battle in the open sea.

De Grasse's fleet was to be the chief factor in the situation, the mainspring of the movement. The preliminary dispositions had already been made. Thirteen Spanish ships of the line were at that moment waiting off Cape Haitien in San Domingo, accompanied by transports with 24,000 troops on board. They were expecting to be joined by a force of 10,000 French soldiers from Brest, escorted by five or six men-of-war which were already overdue. According to the grand plan, De Grasse with his fleet, thirty-four of the line, with store-ships and the convoy that had arrived in March, was to move out from Fort Royal, with some five or six thousand more troops on board the men-of-war, and cross over and join hands with the assemblage off San Domingo. The united armada, making up some sixty ships of the line, against which Rodney's thirty-six and the handful of ships at Port Royal could not hope to stand, were then to swoop down on Jamaica and capture it out of hand. There were only 3500 British regulars in Jamaica, and the planter militia and armed negroes were of little account. Jamaica taken, said the enemy, Barbados would fall at the first summons, and Antigua and St. Lucia would follow, making an end of the British West Indies. So confident were the enemy of success that, as it was reported, Don Bernardo Galvez, the Spanish Commander-in-Chief, had already been publicly addressed at Havana as 'Governor of Jamaica,' which island, according to the secret arrangement between the allies , was to be Spain's share of the spoil.

During March and the early part of April--except for ten days lost in a futile attempt to cut off De Grasse's convoy from France on its way to Fort Royal--Rodney was busy refitting: a task that taxed all his energies owing to the state to which some of the ships had been reduced, short of powder, shot, sea stores of all kinds, bread, even anchors. All the fleet, too, had to be watered, which proved a slow and difficult business owing to the bad weather. 'I think,' wrote Rodney in March, 'the winter season has followed us: nothing but violent hard gales, and such a sea that half the boats of the fleet have been stove in watering, which has delayed us much in refitting.'

Rodney wrote to De Grasse, for instance, in one letter, after dealing in the pleasantest way with the business in hand:--

It will make me happy if at any time this island produces anything worthy your acceptance, or that may be the least useful to your table. As the merchant ships which have lately arrived from Europe may have brought different species of necessaries that may be agreeable to your Excellency, it will make me happy, Sir, to obey your commands.

To set the cause above renown, To love the game beyond the prize, To honour while you strike him down The foe that comes with fearless eyes.

To count the life of battle good, And dear the land that gave you birth, And dearer yet the brotherhood That binds the brave of all the earth.

It was, as it were, the swordsmen's obligatory recognition of each other in 'the Salute' when they first come face to face, ere the sword-blades cross and clash in fight; one of the courtesies of war between destined opponents, wishing one another well until the striking of the appointed hour--

Health and high fortune till we meet, And then--what pleases Heaven!

'Always be polite,' said Bismarck once to Moritz Busch; 'be polite to the foot of the scaffold, but hang your man nevertheless!' Nothing could be nicer than Rodney's attentions, but he was in deadly earnest all the same--he meant, at the proper time, 'to hang his man nevertheless!'

... those gallant fellows who died by guillotine, For honour and the fleur-de-lis and Antoinette the Queen.

And somewhere, 'mid the distant stars, He knows, mayhap, what glory is.

Rodney's thirty-six sail of the line in Gros Islet Bay were thus made up: five three-deckers , and thirty-one two-deckers . They were as a rule older and slower vessels than the French ships: nearly a third of them, in fact, had seen service in the Seven Years' War. In guns the British fleet mounted 2620 pieces all told, against 2526 on the French side, but the enemy's metal was considerably the heavier. Most of De Grasse's ships carried 36-pounders , as against the 32-pounders that were Rodney's heaviest guns. According to the British Flag Captain, Sir Charles Douglas, the difference between the fleets in weight of metal worked out at 4396 lbs. in favour of the enemy. It made the French stronger, Douglas held, by 'the weight of metal of four 84's.' That was the difference on paper. In point of fact, certain details of equipment reversed the disparity. Most of Rodney's ships had their guns fitted with locks and priming-tubes, in place of the old port-fires and powder-horns which the French still used. Also, they had been supplied with certain devices for quickening the service of the guns, increasing their rate of fire, and giving them a wider arc of training on the broadside. All that gave Rodney a very real advantage in hard-hitting power, without counting the carronades or 'smashers' that most of the British ships mounted as extra to their regulation armaments.

All in Gros Islet Bay were burning with anxiety to meet the enemy, absolutely confident of the result. About that, from the highest to the lowest, there were no two opinions. 'Their fate,' wrote Rodney himself in a letter on the 4th of April, 'is only delayed a short time, for have it they must and shall.' That was the common sentiment with all. The fleet was prepared to sail at an hour's notice. All leave was stopped. Not an officer or man was allowed out of his ship except on duty. Rodney meant that the blow, when it fell, should come, in the language of the prize-ring, as a 'knock-out' blow. It should be, to use Rodney's own words, 'the great event that must restore the empire of the seas to Great Britain.'

On the 3rd of April Captain Byron sent in the message that the enemy's preparations for sea appeared complete. On the 5th he signalled across that he could see the French soldiers being embarked on board the men-of-war. The fateful hour was on the point of striking. Then the news that Rodney wanted came. Just before eight on the morning of Sunday, the 8th of April, the signal was seen flying at the mast-head of the nearest of the frigates: 'THE ENEMY ARE COMING OUT OF PORT.'

With boats on board, with anchors weighed, The fleet rides ready in the bay.

The whole fleet was under sail and moving out to sea by a little before eleven. Rodney had started on his chase.

As the British fleet gained the open sea it formed up in order of sailing, Hood's squadron leading.

Clear daylight came about half-past five. It disclosed the entire force of the enemy, both men-of-war and convoy. They were full in sight to the north-east, an irregular array of ships stretching along under the high land of Dominica, and from six to twelve miles off. The leading French ships were trying to weather the northernmost point of the island and work round into the stretch of open water between Dominica and the next island to northward, Guadeloupe, but their progress was slow. Since midnight the wind had fallen away until it was now nearly a dead calm. The bulk of De Grasse's ships were lying off Prince Rupert's Bay with barely steerage way. Rodney, farther to seaward, was in like case. Until nearly seven o'clock it was impossible to move on either side. Then there came a change. Towards seven o'clock the sea-breeze from the north-east, blowing through the channel between Dominica and Guadeloupe, began to reach Hood's ships at the head of the British line. The breeze carried Hood forward and out into the channel; but at the same time it caused him to break away and separate from his own fleet. Rodney himself with the whole of the British centre, and Drake with the rear squadron, were left at some distance astern, beyond the reach of the breeze. They remained unable to get clear of the belt of calm under the lee of Dominica. A gap was formed in the British line as Hood was swept more and more ahead, and it widened rapidly.

The opportunity was too good for De Grasse to miss. He had the windward berth, and fourteen or fifteen of his ships, helped by the same breeze that carried Hood forward, were simultaneously getting clear of the island and into the channel. Only eight ships were with Hood. De Grasse saw a chance of dealing his opponent a telling blow by crippling Hood before the British centre and rear squadrons could move to his support. He signalled to De Vaudreuil, who led the French line, to bring Hood's isolated squadron to action at once.

De Grasse employed the afternoon in working to windward towards the Saints, a group of islets about six miles to southward of Guadeloupe. Rodney, after reversing the order of his line so as to bring Drake's fresh ships to the van and place Hood's squadron in rear, hove-to in order to give the damaged ships an opportunity for attending to their repairs.

They remained hove-to until daybreak next morning , when once more Rodney took up the chase. The French were in sight, some twelve miles off. All day Rodney chased hard, beating up against a stiff north-easterly breeze. The French admiral showed no disposition to turn on his pursuers and fight. 'The French,' wrote Rodney, 'always had it in their power to come into action, which they cautiously avoided.' De Grasse held on his course, and gaining steadily during the day led by fifteen miles at nightfall. He was by then near the Saints. Rodney's last signal before sunset was 'General chase,' so as to give his ships every chance of doing their best independently. There was little fear of missing the enemy. Throughout the night the flashes of the French signal-guns and their signal-flares and false fires were plainly visible.

In spite of Rodney's efforts, however, the French gained on him in the night. To the British admiral's bitter disappointment, on Thursday morning the enemy were nearly out of sight. Only a few of their ships were to be seen. De Grasse, indeed, had secured so long a lead that already a large part of his fleet had weathered the Saints. It looked, in fact, as though the enemy were going to get away clear after all. Rodney, however, was not a man to despair. 'Persist and conquer,' was, as he himself said, his favourite maxim in war. He held doggedly on, trusting to the chapter of accidents. It was, no doubt, all he could do. Anyway, as events proved, it was the right thing.

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